Carol Vogel

For one housing complex in Mumbai, monkeys are the new rats. Sounds kinda cute until you read the article and realize that it’s actually terrifying because monkeys 1) are smart enough to figure out sliding glass windows and elevator buttons, 2) have long, pointy teeth, and 3) straight-up give no fucks. Yikes. [Mid-day]

Ready for your daily dose of low self-esteem? These 40 individuals represent the most “talented, driven and dynamic” professionals under the age of 40 who are working in New York City today. @juliaxgulia and overachievers everywhere. [Crain’s New York Business]

Job interviews are tough enough. Bringing up personal stuff, like maybe wanting to start a family and needing to know that it won’t be a problem, can make it even more awkward. So now there’s a Tumblr that attempts to catalog maternity/paternity/family leave policies so job seekers know what they’re getting into when they sign on with a new company. [Having it Some]

Storm King in the snow (Image courtesy of Storm King Art Center on Facebook)

Last night’s snowstorm came, but it wasn’t a blizzard! Some New Yorkers will be unhappy to know that they will be going to work today; the MTA will be running on a Sunday schedule as of 9:30 a.m. Schools will remain closed. For these, and more updates… [WNYC, any New York news source]

Because all the news is snow-related today, and Cuomo hatred runs high, the Brooklyn Paper reports that last night’s subway ban was a farce—ghost trains ran all night. (They keep the tracks clear). Daily Intelligencer has the proof, in Instagram pics. [Brooklyn Paper]

Good news, curators! The Node Center for Curatorial Studies Berlin has launched a two-month-long residency this fall for curators interested in devising projects beyond the gallery walls. It’s free, and you’ll receive a 900 Euro stipend. Not perfect, but close to paradise for recent Bard MAs. [Call for Curators]

A man carrying meat cleavers tried to attack museum passersby in the Dutch city of Groningen. Police shot him as he jumped into a nearby canal. He is now dead. [Artnet news]

Hide your dogs! 40 innocent pooches have been stolen from a small north Texas town since November. Police have no suspects in the case so far. (I would suggest that the police watch the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry suspects his Korean bookie of killing his friend’s dog for sandwich meat.) [Gawker via WFAA ]

Art writer Carol Vogel pens her last column for the New York Times; she notes changes in the art world since she began writing for the Times in 1991, as well as asks questions for the years to come. “How soon will the bubble burst?” she laments about Sotheby’s and Christie’s. As for Zwirner and Gagosian: “As these mega-companies multiply, there is fear they may start squeezing out the midsize gallery unable to compete with the growing giants.” Standard responses. Vogel accepted a buyout this past fall. [New York Times]

You can now post videos and send group messages on twitter, yay. [The Verge]

Storm King has launched an artist residency program with the Shandaken Project. 15 artists will be selected; you have through February 20 to apply. [Hyperallergic]

In Dallas, Texas, (male) artist Loris Gréaud wasn’t pleased by a review of his show by (female) Dallas Observer art critic Lauren Smart. Gréaud hounds her on Facebook and tells her she’d understand his show better if she got a boyfriend with steroid injections. Smart responds to this nonsense in her own column. [Dallas Observer]

Carol Vogel, the Times lead art reporter is leaving her position. She took a voluntary buyout. Vogel had been the source of some negative press recently—a report she wrote this summer borrowed liberally from a wikipedia entry—but most reporters who leave won’t have that background. Artnews can barely contain their glee about Vogel’s departure. (No link.) Meanwhile, The Times shrinking paper should be a cause of concern. [The Baer Faxt]

Thanks to Jeffrey Deitch, Miley Cyrus performed last night at the Raleigh Hotel in South Beach. Cyrus wore a silver metallic Cleopatra wig and bright turquoise eye-shadow, sang duet of Super Freak with a topless woman, and a bunch of covers. [AP]

Deborah Solomon’s Rockwell biography makes the New York Times’s notable book list. It appears to be the only art book. [New York Times]

“The Interview”, a movie about James Franco and Seth Rogen partying with Kim Jong Un, looks like the most tone-deaf bullshit ever. People are starving. [LA Times]

We’re not even in L.A. and we want to ride the public transit thanks to this retro-eighties commercial promoting the metro. [Culture: High & Low]

A list of Twitter accounts most frequently followed by New York Times staff. Not a single art personality on the list. [TMF]

The Tom of Finland Foundation announces its 10th annual Emerging Artists Competition. Enter an erotic drawing by the November 3, 2014 deadline and you could win a numbered lithograph by Tom of Finland. [Tom of Finland Foundation]

Last chance to see the same balloon dogs and photorealistic kitsch paintings that have been systematically circulating around Gagosian in various combinations for the past ten years. Do not miss this rare opportunity. [Whitney Museum of American Art]

Bill O’Reilly concedes more than I thought he would in this conversation with Jon Stewart about white privilege. [Mother Jones via: The Daily Show]

Speaking of comedy, there aren’t too many more episodes of The Colbert Report left for live viewing. For those of us who don’t have time to wait in line for tickets—everybody but tourists—here’s an app that gives you real-time notifications about ticket availability. [iTunes]

There’s a new Studio Ghibli movie out! Vulture’sBilge Ebiri loves it, but the endorsement kind of goes without saying. This one is all hand-drawn. [Vulture]

Maurizio Cattelan retired after his 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim, but Carol Vogel seems to think a show of his secondary market work split between Venus Over Manhattan and Sotheby’s represents a comeback. Huh? [The New York Times]

Artist Jenny Drumgoole who’s performing/lecturing at Philly’s AUX performance space this Saturday night gets a feature in City Paper! The artist is known for crashing straight-people events like the Wing Bowl and Paula Deen’s cream cheese contest. Lately, she turned a series of surprise parties for her trash collectors into a campaign for a renewed union contract. Keep an eye on this woman. She is a force to be reckoned with. [City Paper]

Carol Vogel, plagiarist? First, Fishbowl NY reported that part of her lede for a story on Piero di Cosimo appeared to be taken from his Wikipedia entry, which was last modified in May. Now, Dan Duray has gone and found a few other instances where Vogel may have lifted from other sources—but as Tyler Green and Kriston Capps have noted on Twitter, these other examples seem to be a bit more questionable. Still, Green hopes that this will cause people to rethink the “stenographic ‘model’” of art writing. [ARTnews]

More neoliberal platitudes from Jeff Koons, this time on Charlie Rose. Jeff Koons has been so thoroughly mined that this interview appears to have pretty much nothing new to say. “Is it a thing, or is it just simply many things?” Rose asks. “Are you waiting, are you inspired, or do you just have something that’s been there, that you just can’t wait to get on with the creation, and you know what it is?” This coverage is getting really out of control. [Hyperallergic]

“We are all daughters of Suzy Lake.” That’s curator Georgiana Uhlyarik on the influential Toronto conceptual artist and photographer; she will get a retrospective at the Art Gallery of Toronto this year. Lake’s early work was part of the WACK! feminist survey, and the show hopes to reaffirm her importance to generations of female artists. [The Star]

What do Lou Reed, Julian Schnabel, and the creator of Flinstones vitamins have in common? The same musical dog trainer; Elizabeth Weiss teaches dogs to “play” the piano. [New York Magazine]

The Metropolitan Museum of Art President Emily K. Rafferty will step down next spring. She was the first woman appointed to the position. “There’s no hidden agenda here — nothing anybody should be looking for,” she said in a statement to the New York Times. “It is completely my decision.” [The New York Times]

For $2000/night, you can sleep over in Judd’s five-story Soho loft, immersing yourself more deeply in art than ever before. [Curbed] UPDATE: Just kidding. [Gallerist]

Following yesterday’s takedown of bikes, and sharing, the Observer kicks off its new column “Isn’t That Rich?,” a column on uptown social life. This week’s edition: chauffeur-nannies, authored by Mr. Burns: “The New York Post recently wrote about parents who were passing off their classroom volunteer duties onto nannies, much to the dismay of their private schools, or rather, of the other moms, who didn’t fancy selling snickerdoodles alongside hired help at bake sales.” Seriously, this is the best thing I’ve read all week. [Observer]

We don’t know how we failed to link this yet, but William Powhida’s new show does a solid job of mocking “conceptually-based” market-tailored art strategies. Between the shipping crate, the neon, the digital color field, he’s basically got the Frieze bases covered. The show’s in LA, but the PDF says it all. [MAN, williampowhida]

Kriston Capps at Washington City Paper has an enjoyably thorough report on Hirshhorn Director Richard Koshalek’s resignation. The bigger question: is Washington willing to support large-scale, unabashedly contemporary projects on the National Mall? [City Paper]

In disputes over fair wages, British museum workers stage walkouts from the National Gallery, Tate Liverpool, Stonehenge, and several more. [BBC]

Carol Vogel’s profile on Massimiliano Gioni tells us little about the Biennale, but once again confirms that, yes, one truly can have it all. [NY Times]

The show is based on the “Encyclopedic Palace,” a Futurist model of a 136 foot-tall skyscraper intended to contain all of the knowledge of the world. It reflects the scope of the art world. Gioni “hop[es] every artist in the show comes across as an outsider.” [Sotheby’s]

HuffPo describes Ai Weiwei’s “Sacred”, a solo show collateral to the Biennale, and its six dioramas of his treatment in prison, and perfect reconstructions of his cell. He’s also showing “Straight,” 150 tons of straightened rebar scrounged from the ruins of Chinese schools which collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and killed over 5,000 children. [HuffPo]

One thing experience has taught me: just because you can relate everything to Andy Warhol, doesn’t mean you should. Carol Vogel’s article about Hans-Peter Feldmann’s plans for his upcoming exhibition at the Guggenheim is a good example. Feldmann, who as the winner of the Hugo Boss Prize receives both a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim and $100,000, plans to pin the money in $1 bills to the walls of the museum. I’m torn about the concept – accumulating a bunch of identical objects and lining the gallery with them is pretty old hat – but the humility that drives it is, I think, honest.